Abstract
Employers are increasingly including volunteer activities in their social responsibility programs. At companies at which this is done in a planned manner, we can speak of the development of a corporate volunteering, which correlates with numerous positive psychological outcomes at both the individual and the organizational level. The aim of the study was to investigate the relationship between the corporate volunteering programs and job characteristics, connected with work engagement. In our study we were interested in identifying the role of the corporate volunteering in the evaluation of job resources and work engagement. The study included 274 employees from 15 Slovenian companies, of whom 62% participate in their organizations’ volunteer activities. They filled out the Job demands and resources questionnaire, the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES-17) and a scale for measuring the corporate volunteering climate. The results indicate that the carrying out of volunteer activities correlates with the perception of the corporate volunteering climate. Employees whose employers implement volunteering programs are more engaged and report higher levels of both autonomy and support from their co-workers and supervisors. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
Highlights
Today, volunteers play an important role in addressing numerous social problems, from poverty and hunger to assisting victims of natural disasters, and political issues, such as migrants in recent times
Volunteering is done in employees’ free time, but recently it has been introduced at work, with some employers including volunteer activities as part of their social responsibility programs
The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between the corporate volunteering programs and job characteristics, as a potential source of advocacy for voluntarism, and with work engagement, a construct that has played a significant role in the organizational environment recently
Summary
Volunteers play an important role in addressing numerous social problems, from poverty and hunger to assisting victims of natural disasters, and political issues, such as migrants in recent times. 140 million people around the world engage in volunteering and thereby contribute 400 billion US dollars to the global economy annually (Wu, 2011). Volunteering is done in employees’ free time, but recently it has been introduced at work, with some employers including volunteer activities as part of their social responsibility programs. After the end of the global economic crisis in 2015 (Kohont and Stanojevic, 2017), the labor market has changed considerably (Mucci et al, 2016) due to different social and economic changes (Giorgi et al, 2015). Corporate Volunteering and Work Engagement of organizations have increased and made a place for various benefit programs devoted to broader society . Corporate volunteering has attracted the growing interest of researchers, in the area of organizational psychology
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